Nigeria tried something close to this in 2023, The naira redesign happened, cash became nearly impossible to find, and people were lining up outside banks for hours just to withdraw money that was already theirs, Market women couldn't sell, Danfo drivers couldn't collect fares. On the one hand, the people in the villages who had never seen a post machine before were required to work in a cash-less economy over night, It was chaos, and that experience alone should tell us everything we need to know about this conversation.
The concept of going 100 percent digital is not a bad one on paper. Let me make this clear, a cashless society is a society where no cash is used and all the transactions will be easily tracked, with this , there's no space for corruption, it will be reduced, records will be cleaner, payments will be faster etc, It is a great way to go if we get the right setting, It works beautifully in countries such as Sweden have been moving towards it for years and it makes sense, the infrastructure exists, the internet is reliable, the people are banked, the systems support it.
But, we are not Sweden.
There are millions of people in Nigeria that don't have bank account, not because they don't want one, but because the banking system hasn't gotten to them, or hasn't gained their trust or simply doesn't fit into their lifestyle of small day to day transactions, The woman selling tomatoes in Oyingbo market is not thinking about transfer limits and USSD codes, she is thinking about whether her customer has the right change, cash works for her, It has always worked, and telling her that it is being abolished before anything better has been properly put in place for her is not progress, It is abandonment.
Then there's the problem with the infrastructure… which no one has dares to address straight, Electricity is needed for digital payments, they need internet, they require servers that have a high uptime, They have to have the RIGHT POS machines that are actually connected, A fully digital economy is not a nice plan in a country where NEPA is a punch line and network failures are an inconvenience every day, it is a prayer, and prayers without preparation tend not to work out.
I also think about what this does to financial privacy, cash has an anonymity to it that digital transactions simply don't, Each transfer, each payment, each kobo that circulates through a digital system can be tracked, stored and accessed, accountability is a form of trustworthy governance and strong institutions in a country, In a nation where they're yet to be finalized, it feels more like surveillance.
That said, I do believe the direction should be towards digital. I believe it's a natural progression and required process, the difference between good idea and good policy is timing and preparation, you build the roads before you ban walking, you fix the power supply before you make everything electric, you bring the unbanked into the financial system genuinely before you remove the only financial tool they currently have.
The problem is not to go cashless, the problem is when you are trying to go cashless in a country that isn't ready, with people who have not been carried along , that is the problem.
The goal should be to get ready.
Not to pretend we already are.
Image Is Generated With Gemini AI
